Slow Start!

I'm Fish, and i have been playing TF2 for around 1.5 years now. i have over 1k hours and i feel like i should be doing more thank playing, so i wanted to start in mapping. I'm an avid mapmaker, and usually if a game on steam has a mapmaking aspect to it, i am bound to eventually pick it up. I have had experience mapping in other things, like Tesseract, a child of Cube 2: Saeurbraten, you could call it.

I have minimal experience with hammer, so i came here to get help and learn how to make things work. Ever since i watched Crash's video on his 72 hr mapping contest entry, [pl_crash_72] i finally decided i would pick up hammer and take a shot. I want to say a huge thanks to crash, for inspiring me to start, and Egan, for his post in the tutorials section that's still helping me.

I hope that i can dive further into the mapping community, and any tips and such would be appreciated!